Structural issues at the underfunded SEC

The New York Times is reporting this morning that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) has caught the attention of the Government Accounting Office each of the last seven years for faulty financial reporting.  This report happens at a time when the...

An increasingly violent edge in Egypt

Over the weekend I provided a purely intuitive assessment of what was going on in Egypt.  I also said that the situation is in flux because the various participants all have free-will and get to choose how to respond.  So here is an update on my evolving intuitive...

Private sectors jobs in January

This morning payroll giant Automatic Data Processing announced its monthly payroll survey results.  The numbers are encouraging vis-a-vis the unemployment rate in the United States.  In January the private sector added 187,000 jobs.  This compares to an expected...

Outrageous Wall Street executive pay 2010-style

Yesterday evening the Wall Street Journal reported that total compensation and benefits at Wall Street firms totaled a record $135 billion in 2010.  Mind you, this is just for the publicly traded firms, there are many other Wall Street firms that are not publicly...

Another crisis in Jordan?

One of the questions on the minds of those of us concerned about the revolution-evolution in Egypt is what the effect will be on other Middle Eastern nations.  After all, Egypt’s crisis began after a popular uprising in Tunisia.   So you may have heard the...